WOODBERRY POETRY ROOM: DOCOMOMO US response to Boston Globe article

October 23, 2006

October 13, 2006To the Editor: Your critic, Robert Campbell, (October 8, 2006) doubts that Harvard University will learn to avoid the trouble its renovation of Alvar Aalto's Woodberry Poetry Room caused by 'going public' before, rather than after, making 'tub-on-its-own-bottom' decisions about campus renovations of modernist buildings.DOCOMOMO US, the organization devoted to the DOcumentation and COnservation of MOdern MOvement architecture, is a 'tub' of architects, historians, preservationists and advocates committed to the meaningful preservation of modern architecture. This summer, it created an on-line forum on its home page that did what Harvard did not do—it took the Woodberry debate public and allowed the exchange between historians and architects that Campbell rightly regretted was missing from Harvard's playbook.At www.docomomo-us.org your readers will find Harvard and its critics' detailed analyses of the project, impassioned arguments against the renovation by well known architects and scholars from Harvard and around the world, links to national and international press coverage, and instructions for gaining admission to the Woodberry in order to see and decide for oneself. DOCOMOMO US Executive Committee:Theodore Prudon, PresidentJorge Otero-Pailos, Vice PresidentHélène Lipstadt, SecretaryMark Lee, Treasureroriginal text of Boston Globe article

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